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ORATION 



DELIVERED BY 



CHARLES MURRAY NAIRNE, M. A., 



BEFORE THE 



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RUTGERS COLLEGE, 

NEW BEUNSW1CK, N. J. 



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JOSEPH W. HARRISON, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, BY STEAM, 
447 Broome Street, one door west of Broadway. 

18 57. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the jear 1857, by the 

PHILOCLEAN SOCIETY, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
of New York. 



Philoclean Hall, June 30, 1857. 

Prof. Charles M. Nairne, 

Sir : — At a Special Meeting of the Philoclean 
Society, held this day, it was unanimously resolved that a 
vote of thanks be tendered to Charles Murray Nairne, for 
his very interesting and eloquent Address, and that a copy 
of the same be requested for publication. 

We, the Committee, sincerely hope you will comply 
with the wishes of the Society. 

Cyrus B. Durand, 

John B. Drury, 

T. Sandford Doolittle. 



New York, July 1st, 1857. 
Gentlemen : — 

I have much pleasure in acknowledging 
your vote of thanks, and in giving up my manuscript to 
your Society for publication. 

I remain, 

Very sincerely yours, 

Charles Murray Nairne. 

To CYRUS B. DURAND, 
JOHN B. DRURY, 
T. SANDFORD DOOLITTLE. 



O R^T ION. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen of the 

Phtloclean and Peithessophian Societies : 

Judging from the exercises with which your academi- 
cal course is closed, and the crowds of delighted listeners 
who always countenance your efforts on such occasions, 
one would conclude that, both in your estimation and in 
theirs, Oratory is regarded as the crown of all your labors 
— the bright consummate flower of all your cultivation. — 
And who will venture to discourage you by pronouncing 
this estimate erroneous ? I am aware that men of mere 
literature and science are prone to underrate any excel- 
lence except that which belongs to their own pursuits. — 
They forget that simple intellectual or artistic power may 
exist, and very frecmently does exist, without that practical 
sagacity, and force of will, which are necessary to govern 
men ; and that a first-rate ruler or general might make no- 
thing better, with any amount of training, than a second- 
rate orator, philosopher, or poet. Nevertheless, as a test 
of the mental activity, strength, and symmetry to which 
your college culture has conducted you, I know of no sin- 
gle exercise more decisive than the production of a speech. 
It is better to give than to receive — to bring forth than to 
absorb ; and many a student, who has succeeded in master- 



ing the conceptions of others, may fail in reproducing the 
results of his study, in a composition of his own. Philoso- 
phy may have been pondered that lie might learn the na- 
ture and laws of mind ; science, that he might learn to ana- 
lyse and deduce ; rhetoric and language, that he might 
learn to clothe his ideas in suitable words ; and in all these 
he may have made respectable proficiency ; he may also 
have gathered a store of facts and principles from history 
and general reading, and of images from poetry and elo- 
quence ; still, if he is found wanting in the power of making 
use of his acquisitions in some original production, his 
training has certainly come short of its proper end. Unless 
as a mechanical hearer of recitations, sometimes called a 
teacher, or a dry, insect-like perforator of some narrow stra- 
tum in the wide world of knowledge, sometimes called a 
savant, he does not deserve the name of a productive la- 
borer. He is a plant without fruit — a failure — an unfin- 
ished man ! There is no academical duty which taxes a 
student's abilities so much as the work of really good com- 
position. Its difficulty is notorious in every school; and 
w T hile your pupil will pore willingly over classics, or mathe- 
matics, or physics, or philosophy, striving to comprehend 
and remember the thoughts of other men, — he goes either 
reluctantly, or with a profound sense of its arduousness, 
to the task of gracefully embodying his own. The prepar- 
ation of lessons may be done — not with absolute perfection, 
I admit, — but yet very respectably, while the whole soul 
is never fully awake ; but all the energies of the soul must 
be aroused to the utmost for the elaboration of a meritori- 
ous essay or oration. This task demands the same enthusi- 
astic wakefulness, as original scientific research, and the 



exercise of a greater number of faculties, — of faculties, 
indeed, which the mere scientific investigator may not pos- 
sess. It is the assemblage and concentration of all jour 
accomplishments in one grand exhibition of jour proii- 
ciencj. 

In the retrospect of mj own university life, I can recall 
the frequent pretences of prize essajs being written in a 
few hours, and of prize poems thrown off bj some joung 
prodigj — some Lucilius without his mud — who could 
dictate two hundred verses while standing on one foot. — 
If these representations had been true, the essajs, I fear, 
would never have been crowned, and the verses would 
have been as lame as the poet's own attitude. Your expe- 
rience, I am persuaded, will bear me out in pronouncing 
all such pretensions false ; for even when the mere process 
of writing maj have been comparativelj easj and rapid, 
the materials of the composition must have been previously 
familiarized to the mind of the writer, either bj careful 
special research, or in the course of his general study and 
reflection. From nothing, nothing is made ; and the inspi- 
ration even of Genius is by no means identical with that 
of the twelve apostles, who were commanded not to think 
beforehand of what they should say in their mission, because 
a mouth and wisdom irresistible were promised them in the 
hour of need. ]N"o such promise has been made either to 
you or to me. Our eloquence, if we have any, must be 
supplied from provident accumulations ; else it will be of 
little credit to ourselves, and small advantage to our hearers. 
Besides, the very wonderfulness of the improvisatore pro- 
ductions, whose existence I have presumed to question, is 



founded on the admitted difficulty of good writing ; for 
where there is no extraordinary difficulty there can be no 
miracle. 

" Nee deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus !" 

Nor is this estimate of the excellence of oratory pecu- 
liar to the student. It is also the general estimate of man- 
kind. The time has never been when the admiration of 
the human race has not been divided between these two — 
the great speaker and the great warrior. The genius of 
Homer is more diffuse, but not more loftily inspired, in 
picturing the exploits of Achilles, than in describing the 
eloquence of Nestor and Ulysses ; and the Indian Chief is 
as proud of his oratory as of his daring. Some years ago we 
had a work on the decisive battles of the world. A suita- 
ble companion to this, would be another on the decisive 
conventions of the world ; and I believe that in the hands 
of a competent historian, the latter would be equally exci- 
ting with the former. Doubtless there is a fascinating sub- 
limity in the career of a conqueror. The imagination dwells 
with rapture, on the long procession of his legions, their 
helms and corslets flashing over the land, and their ensigns 
waving interminably to the horizon's verge ; the gorgeous 
troop of chieftains and bannermen that surround his car ; the 
swell of martial music, inspiring valor, and measuring the 
tramp of his innumerable host ; the shock of charging squad- 
rons; the bravery that laughs at death, and exults amid 
thunders more terrible than those of heaven ; the capture 
and the rescue ; the rout and the rally, and all the dread mag- 
nificence of war ! But there is a loftier, although a calmer 
sublimity — at least we can well conceive of such — in the 







triumph of a great speaker, for " earthly power doth then 
show likest God's," when an eloquent man holds the hearts of 
myriads in his grasp, and turns them whithersoever he wills. 
Picture to yourselves the collected rank and wisdom of some 
mighty realm — an assemblage of all that is great, and sage, 
and learned — within some ancient pile of high renown, or on 
some famous plain, where the vaulted sky affords a grander 
canopy than fretted roof and pillared dome, and the congre- 
gated people form a nobler environment than sculptured 
walls ! They are met. to deliberate on some great scheme or 
enterprise, — some holy crusade or declaration of indepen- 
dence — that involves the world's fate throughout all future 
time, — and high amid the throng stand* forth the Orator! 
On him all eyes are bent, to him all hearts are turned, his 
very look draws audience, his voice goes forth amid the 
hush, and no pealing organ or grand orchestra ever sent out 

through ten thousand breasts a wave of influence so elec- 
ts 

trical ! Truth grows to full stature as his proof proceeds, 
the general judgment is carried captive, and, while demon- 
tration and conviction are followed up by persuasion, and 
pathos, and passionate appeal, and patriotic fervor, and 
indignant denunciation, the multitude, like ocean beneath 
the breeze, stirs submissive to his words — it trembles, it 
swells, it fluctuates, it uplifts the thunder of its acclaim — 
the cry ascends, " It is the will of God !" — the lightning of. 
eloquence hath fused the souls of that assembly into one, 
and who shall now withstand the burning torrent ? This is 
verily a triumph beyond the soldier's ovation, a conquest 
without humiliation, a subjugation unattended either by 
suffering or shame ! 



10 



Or can we not conceive a display of oratory grander 
still, though accompanied by less of worldly pomp ? The 
Son of Man, who spake as never man spake, and whose 
divine countenance it has, for ages, been the pride of high- 
est art to portray — seated on the mountain side, or by the 
crowded shore, and uttering with a majesty of eloquence, 
"above all Greek, above all Roman fame,'' the sublime 
revelations of the Evangel ? Or Paul on Mars' Hill, casting 
into shade, more by the superiority of his theme than the 
perfection of his rhetoric, the glory of Demosthenes, amid 
the children of those same Athenians whom the illustrious 
orator had roused to stem the aggressions of the Macedo- 
nian king ? Or some heroic old covenanter, from whose 
heart the fear of God had expelled all fear of man, sustain- 
ing the courage of persecuted saints, as by the rushing 
waterfall, or on the lonely moor, or in the sequestered 
burial ground, amid the tombs of their fathers, he preached 
to them the resurrection of those dead, and the bliss of 
immortality? Or the rapt missionary — leader of the only 
true crusade — proclaiming to the wondering ears of idol- 
worshippers, amid the snows of Greenland, or the soft luxu- 
riance of Hindostan, the attributes of the only living God, 
the love of the only Redeemer, and the dread recompenses 
of an eternity that no longer remained a delusion and a 
dream \ What thinking man will say that these heavenly 
uses of eloquence do not place the orator oe the very top- 
most pinnacle of human greatness ? 

Such may be regarded as the general estimate of oratory 
among men. But there are communities in which, from 
the nature of their institutions, eloquence is of special 



11 



value, and the gifts of the orator invest him with a special 
power. A despotic empire can be no nursery for truly 
great speakers. There, few great subjects fall to be dis- 
cussed. Political rights and public interests — those noblest 
fields of eloquence — are overlaid by absolute rule. Even 
religion is a thing prescribed and watched, and the tongue 
of the orator must be attuned to no loftier theme than the 
flattery of an autocrat, or the vain ceremonies of a compul- 
sory faith. The strained laudations of terrified imbecility, 
and boastful reminiscences of glory passed away, are, even 
in the mouth of a Cicero, poor substitutes for the natural 
inspirations of honest truth, the glow of patriotism, and the 
trumpet strains of independence. On the other hand, where- 
ever freedom has found a home, there eloquence will flour- 
ish. The empire of Opinion is there established, and an 
idea is more influential than a sceptre. In such a state, 
he who can control the intellect, and heart, and will of the 
people, is the real potentate. He leads his countrymen. — 
He defends his country. He makes peace and declares 
war. He is the highest and most legitimate of principali- 
ties and powers. Now, this is precisely the kind of a 
community in which our lot is cast ; and hence in no other 
is the truly eloquent man more needed, and more entitled 
to public admiration. America lias been jocularly satirized 
by one of her most gifted sons, as a mighty Logocracy — a 
huge government of talk ! No doubt the frequency of our 
rhetorical exhibitions, and the incompetency of many who, 
for lack of better men, are thrust forward on such occasions, 
lay her open to ridicule and sarcasm. Let it never be for- 
gotten, however, that our very passion for public speaking 
is a token of our liberty ; and our true wisdom is, not to 



12 



laugh at the passion, or attempt suppressing it ; but to 
regulate it, to refine it, to enlighten it, and to use it. To 
us a discussion of oratory is no mere speculation, like the 
character of some foreign sage or hero ; no mere recreation, 
like poetical or picturesque reminiscences of Rome or Venice. 
It is a thoroughly practical question ; an absolutely vital 
question. It involves our prosperity and existence as a 
nation. Our talkers are our guides and governors ; and 
surely a mighty matter would be gained, if, in any way, it 
could be brought about that our platform brawlers, our 
shallow ranters, and common-place figure-mongers, instead 
of having the best chance, should have little or no chance 
at all ; if the common judgment were so enlightened, and 
the common taste so rectified, that mere glitter should not 
pass for substance — mere words for things — mere " sound 
and fury signifying nothing" for eloquence — bragging for 
conscious worth — mob flattery for public spirit — abuse 
for argument — libel for logic — sneers for sense, — and 
vituperation for demonstration. And to whom, gentlemen, 
can we look for the desired process of enlightenment and 
rectification, if not to our students? Their avowed object 
is to become leaders of our country's thought. They are 
in training either for orators, or for judges of oratory. — 
They hope to be the lights of the land ; but if the very 
light that is among us be darkness, how great is that dark- 
ness ! Allow me, therefore, in the remainder of this address, 
to furnish you, if I can, with some tests whereby you may 
try the spirit of eloquence both in yourselves and others, 
and with some considerations which may constrain you to 
hold fast by that which is good. In doing this I shall not 
content myself with simple precept, but shall add thereto 



13 



the illustration of successful example. The example I have 
chosen is that of Thomas Chalmers, the Scottish preacher ; 
not that his oratory was, by any means, perfect, but because 
he was a more effective speaker than any I ever heard, and 
because I have had the best opportunities of ascertaining 
the secrets and peculiarities of that art, by which he acted, 
with an absolutely magical power, on the multitudes who 
hung upon his lips. 

What, therefore, is Oratory ? Let us first attempt to 
approach our answer retrogress! vely — to back up to it, if I 
may use such a common phrase — by a series of negatives. 

Oratory, is not delivery. In the days of Demosthe- 
nes, men had not got so far as to separate eloquence 
from speech. Eloquence and elocution, deriving their 
names from the same root, were almost or altogether 
identical. On no other principle can we explain the oft- 
quoted opinion of the Greek statesman, when he affirmed 
that action was the first, second, and third requisite of ora- 
tory ; for now-a-days, we should say that he was describing 
a stage player — not an orator. The press is a power of 
modern times, and modern speech-makers can address mil- 
lions, without the instrumentality of voice or gesture. — 
These we are left to supply ourselves, as we do scenery and 
action in perusing a drama ; and hence we characterize a 
speech as eloquent, apart altogether from its delivery. — 
The great orations of antiquity are eloquent still, and would 
be so, had they never been addressed to an audience. Their 
immortality is not due to action, which passed away for 
ever with the occasion of their utterance. It is true that a 



14 



finished delivery will set oft a discourse which may exhibit 
few or none of the higher attributes of eloquence, and 
therefore, as Demosthenes averred, delivery ought to be a 
matter of much care with him who aims at oratorical suc- 
cess. Yet elocution no more constitutes eloquence than 
smooth versification constitutes poetry. ~No speech is really 
eloquent, which is not eloquent when coolly perused in the 
privacy of our own chambers. Gesture, tone, and emphasis, 
are nothing else than accessories of oratory ; and would be 
as far from rendering common places eloquent, as a dress 
of lace and spangles would be, from converting a wooden 
image of the Virgin Mary into a Greek Slave, or a Venus 
di Medicis. The vulgar might, and would, admire the 
block for its finery ; but the refined and tasteful would 
prefer the naked marble, for that intrinsic beauty, which 
foreign ornament might easily mar, but could not possibly 
improve. 

With respect to the celebrated saying of Demosthenes, 
I cannot help thinking — may I be pardoned for the pre- 
sumption ! — that both Cicero and Quintilian must have 
misapprehended its true meaning. To lay so much stress 
on mere delivery is manifestly absurd ; for a poor speech 
with elaborate action would be ridiculous — as ridiculous as 
Tom Thumb in the costume of Napoleon, or a fishing boat 
in the rig of a man-of-war. May not the Grecian orator 
have intended to recommend, in addition to an animated 
delivery, the study of that style which Aristotle has named 
the " agonistic," wherein we wrestle with an auditory, in 
opposition to the " graphic," which we use in the written 
disquisition or essay ? The style of a speech, even when 



15 



composed in the closet, ought to be vehement and dramatic, 
as is natural to one who may be supposed to address an 
assembly without premeditation, and on the spur of some 
pressing and momentous occasion. "When Lord Jeffrey went 
into parliament, he delivered a learned and labored produc- 
tion in favor of the English Eeform Bill. It was, in fact, the 
best argument on that side of the question ; nevertheless it 
fell almost dead on the house, because, as the newspapers of 
the time described it, it was nothing but a spoken article ; 
very suitable for the written pages of the Edinburgh Review, 
but very unsuitable for the agonistic arena of the House of 
Commons. It wanted action. It could not possibly be 
taken for the fresh, natural utterance of spontaneous thought 
and feeling. It was anything but Demosthenic. 

Delivery, then, is not oratory. It is far from being 
even the first requisite of oratory. Neither again, is oratory 
mere accurate and convincing ratiocination ; for, in that 
case, Euclid's Elements of Geometry would be the most 
eloquent of books, and the "pons asiiiorunr' would stand 
as a rival to the ^spi grspavou. Logical demonstration is 
not oratory ; but as will more particularly appear hereafter, 
it is an essential attribute of true eloquence. 

Nor, further, is oratory the simple power of stirring 
the passions ; for a speech that proves nothing, but deals 
only in passionate appeals, cannot be effectual except on 
rare occasions ; that is, when the facts which constitute the 
ground of the appeal are well known, or have been previ- 
ously established by proof. An advocate who should over- 
look the law and testimony in a case, and run off into 



16 



general declamation, conlcl succeed only with a foolish 
jury, and a more foolish judge; and even a eulogist must 
show some good claim to praise on the part of his hero, if 
he expects an intelligent audience to sympathize in his 
encomium. Besides, even if we did define eloquence to be 
the faculty of exciting emotion, we should not come one 
whit nearer a true and satisfactory account of its nature. — 
The question would still remain unsolved ; what is the secret 
of that power ? In other words, we are brought back, at the 
conclusion of all our negatives, to the original enquiry : — 
What is Oratory ? 

The difficulty of an answer is obvious. It is as hard to 
tell what Oratory is, as to tell what Poetry is. All the fine 
arts have a close relation to each other; and perhaps in 
seeking for the essential characteristic of one, we may fall 
upon that of another also. 



In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, 

I shot his fellow of the self-same flight 

The self-same way, with more advised watch, 

To find the other forth ; and by adventuring both 

I oft found both. 



Let us try, then, the art of Painting; so near akin to 
Poetry that Horace, vou remember, thus unites them : 



" — ■ — - Pictoribus atque poetis 

Quidlibet audendi semper fait aequa potestas ;" 

and let us take for illustration one of the simplest exhibi- 
tions of the art. We may have two portraits of the same 
person, which are accurate likenesses, while only one of 



17 



them proves the possession of Genius by the artist. In the 
one we can trace all the features of the original. All the 
necessary of a portrait is there, but nothing whatever of 
the possible / no sublimation of the mere mortal into the 
immortal ; no penetration and forth-showing of the inner 
man, no irradiation of humanity with the light of imagina- 
tion ; no appearance, on the painted figure, of aught save 
plain, matter-of-fact existence. In the other we have 
more than matter-of-fact. Truth- — the whole truth is there ; 
yet not simply the truth as it is, but likewise the truth as it 
ought to be — an approximation, at least, to the portraiture 
of the body, as it shall appear, when, retaining all its fea- 
tures, it shall, notwithstanding, be raised a glorious body. 
It is thus that Genius anticipates Heaven ! 

Or, to take a second illustration from Sculpture. The 
Apollo Belvidere is not merely a handsome statue — fault- 
less in face and form. It is a divinity in marble — 

" Tbe Sun In human limbs arrayed " — 

an embodiment of beauty and grace, majesty and power, 
which we almost think we could separate from the image, 
as if they were hovering around it, or emanating from it. — 
It shows all the necessary in member, joint, and lineament, 
and all the possible in the ideal of our nature. It is poetry 



And thus we are brought to the same blending of the 
possible with the necessary in poetry. Remember always 
that this blending is not the incongruous addition of perfec- 
tion to imperfection. It is no mechanical mixture of "iron 



18 
% 

with miry clay.' 5 It is a substantial union of the divine 
with the human — the celestial with the earthly — the 
etherializing of things that be, into things that may be, 
while yet they preserve their identity. To Peter Bell, that 
most prosaic personage with most unpoetical name, depicted 
by Wordsworth- — 

" A primrose by a river's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him, 

And it was nothing more." 

It presented all the necessary of a flower. But a mind 
of another order would have made it poetical — sublimed 
it into such an object as it would have appeared to Eve in 
paradise, or to an angel by the river of life ! 

Now, have we anything like this process in oratory ? 
No doubt we have. It is this which distinguishes it from 
common talk, and pedestrian disquisition. Still oratory is 
not poetry. The celestial element is differently exhibited. 
In poetry, earth is raised to heaven ; in oratory, heaven is 
brought down to earth. In the former, it is as if a man 
assumed the tongue of an angel ; in the latter, it is as if an 
angel brought his bright mind, and glowing speech to bear 
on things terrestrial. There is, in oratory, a more practical 
exercise of genius than in poetry — a more direct applica- 
tion of its energy to every-day matters. Eloquence is the 
beauty of utility ; poetry is the utility of beauty. Elo- 
quence resembles the breeze of heaven in the sail of a 
majestic vessel wafting onward the productions of human 
labor ; poetry is like the light of heaven that floats around 



10 



all objects, and seems to animate them, and fills the air 
as with an ether of life ! 

But after all. as in poetry, so in oratory, we must be 
contented, perhaps, with an apj)eal to the consciousness of 
men in respect to the feeling of it. We know it when it 
comes before ns, if we are endowed with the faculty of 
apprehending it ; and to those who cannot apprehend it on 
being simply presented, no definition will suffice to render 
it palpable. We may mention, however, certain qualities 
of eloquence which explanation will make more clear, and 
which may be so far acquired by care and practice. If we 
are not able to impart "the gift and faculty divine" that 
make the orator, we may put the oratorical aspirant in the 
fair way of doing justice to his inspiration, if he happens 
to have any. 

And First, the eloquent man is natural. His manner, 
his tones, his style, his argumentation, his feeling, his flights 
of fancy, are all the spontaneous results of his mind's being 
fully occupied with his subject, and with nothing else, for 
the time being. A manner studied and artificial ; tones 
that rise not from, and correspond not with, the sentiment 
he utters ; a style that attracts attention to itself, and is not 
the transparent vehicle of his thoughts ; reasoning that is 
far-fetched and fantastic, such as Shakespeare ridicules in 
Polonius ; pathos that tends to start no tear because it finds 
no sympathy ; and figures that neither elucidate nor adorn, 
but are only attempts to make the people say " how smart 
he is," constitute a mere parody of oratory, scarcely impo- 



20 



sing on the ignorant, and fitted to provoke the mirth of 
wise men, if their disgust did not stifle their laughter. 

Archbishop Whateley who, although himself no orator, 
is yet an admirable judge of eloquence, has said — and, by 
the way, we recommend to all students his observations on 
this point — that elocution and declamation, as commonly 
studied, have spoiled more speakers than they have bene- 
fitted. In this I heartily agree with the Archbishop ; for 
the artificial inflexions, tones, postures, stretchings forth of 
the hands, and heavenward roiling of the eyes, exhibited by 
persons who attempt to put their elocution in practice, and 
their ambitious imitations of the speeches which they have 
parrotted for spouting, counterfeit nature more abominably 
than the great, stiff, staring dolls that excite rustic wonder 
in the shop windows of a metropolitan hair dresser. One 
flash of real nature is worth a whole eternity of such mum- 
mery. If our attention to gesture and inflexion has been 
carried so far as to cure all awkwardness of tone and motion, 
then we have really made a valuable acquisition. We can 
then give our feelings full play, without the risk of ungrace- 
fulness. But if our art and practice in vocal gymnastics 
go not so far as to conceal themselves by becoming a second 
nature, we had better rest contented with that which nature 
has originally bestowed on us, and which she will certainly 
not fail to display, if we honor her with the faith of true 
men. The accomplished musician thinks of his theme, and 
not of his fingers, when he charms the sense, and so must 
the speaker of his theme, and not of his tones and postures, 
if he would charm the soul. His voice must be attuned, 
his limbs must be moved, as his thoughts must be suppli- 



21 



ed, from within, and as little as possible from without, 
himself. 

Secondly, an eloquent man is natural because he is 
earnest and honest. His heart's desire is to communicate 
with the mind of his audience — to lay hold of it and wield 
it for some cherished purpose. Neither can his oratory be 
of the highest order unless his earnestness springs from 
thoroughly honest conviction, and passionate love of truth. 
The hired defender of the guilty, and the partizan advocate 
of a faction, fight for victory and spoil ; and in the excite- 
ment of the contest, they may summon up a theatrical and 
transient earnestness ; but that earnestness can no more be 
compared with the fervor of an honest truth-worshipper, 
than the valor of & filibuster o deserves to-be compared with 
the courage of a patriot — the heroism of Walker with the 
heroism of Washington. In the latter sort of earnestness 
there is no selfishness, and hence it can lead to no display of 
self. Only let it be pure and strong enough, and the man 
who is under its inspiration will never be chargeable with 
unlawful artifice, or vain-glorious exhibition. Both end and 
means will be worthy. The appropriateness of every ele- 
ment in his discourse will be in direct proportion to the 
singleness and intensity of his desire to enforce truth ; and 
however poorly he may have been exercised in the study 
of speech-making, he will at least show no hollow rhetoric 
no conceited reasoning, no affected intonation, no iuconor u~ 
ous action. Honest nature will have her way, and shame 
the art of the schools. If men who attempt oratory could 
only divest themselves of the idea of themselves; if they 
were really taken up with the subject of their speech alone 



22 



— if they would confine themselve to the single aim of 
stating and enforcing truth with some adequate sense of its 
importance, and leave vanity and popularity at home, how 
much folly would be avoided by speakers, and how much 
pain spared on the part of pitying and wearied listeners. — 
A man thoroughly, purely in earnest does not talk as a 
mere talker. He says what he has to say, and is content. 
He speaks as if his sole concern were the truth and perti- 
nence, not the beauty and brilliancy, of what he utters. And 
even in the retirement of the closet, he who writes best, is 
he who writes with the single, sincere purpose of presenting 
Truth in her own naked symmetry and glory. Genuine 
oratory walks and does not dance, marches and does not 
minuet, rushes and does not gracefully caper ! 

In the Third place, there cannot be true eloquence 
without solid thought. Eloquence is not pretty sentences, 
and ornate diction ; neither is it, as some suppose, the 
power of dramatic anecdote, whether picturesque, pathetic 
or ludicrous. Eloquence is not any of these, although they 
all may frequently, and with propriety go along with it ; but 
it is thought and demonstration clothed with sentiment, 
adorned as the goodly tree is, by the efflorescence of its 
own branches, not by garlands hung on, and above all, 
instinct with the fervor of a truth- worshipper. A discourse 
that proves nothing may be graceful and effecting ; but it 
does not deserve the name of oratory ; and even its power 
to move depends, as I have said before, on its being an ex- 
position of things that have been previously established by 
proof. Declamation that has no substratum of substantial 
mind- work, is mere literary syllabub — frothy, windy, and, 



23 



in large doses, sickening. Oratory is impassioned argu- 
ment. 

But the advance of time warns me to quit this general 
speculation on the nature and properties of eloquence, and 
proceed to the consideration of the oratory of Chalmers, 
which I have proposed as our special exemplification. In 
pointing out the characteristics of his eloquence, I shall, in 
addition to other matters, be able to show you, how the 
three great qualities of naturalness, earnestness, and im- 
passioned argumentation, will overcome many defects, 
which, without these qualities, would have been laughable 
or displeasing. For while no man ever excelled the Scot- 
tish preacher in the overwhelming efficacy of his displays, 
no man, with an orator's reputation, was ever more careless 
of many of the adjuncts of oratory, or cumbered the free 
course of his conceptions, by a more artificial and singular 
style. He w^as great in spite of these peculiarities ; and 
perhaps ultimately they came to possess, for his admirers, 
a certain charm, as being suggestive of the man. 

Like all great men, Chalmers was a lover of knowl- 
edge ; but there were certain ideas which he grappled to 
his heart with the ardor of a peculiar and enthusiastic af- 
fection. Most philosophers have a favorite walk of investi- 
gation ; and to that, in all its particulars, their thoughts are 
turned. They explore it, not only in its great features, but 
even in its most minute, and are not satisfied till they feel 
perfectly at home in all. But Chalmers can scarcely be 
said to have thoroughly mastered any one science : I would 
not except even Ethics and Theology. Far be it from me to 



M 



insinuate that he had not power to scale the loftiest heights, 
and search the profoundest depths of any subject. He 
could have been, if he had chosen, a mathematician, astron- 
omer, chemist, geologist, linguist, or metaphysician of the 
very highest order. But Divine Providence withdrew him, 
in mid career, from the pursuit of science, and demanded 
the consecration of all his gifts to the revival of Evangelism 
m the church of his fathers, and the continuance of the great 
work which the Scottish Reformers began, but which had 
long been laid aside for the cultivation of mere literature, 
by such ecclesiastical leaders as Robertson and Blair. From 
that moment, Chalmers ceased to think that study ought to 
be pursued for one's own pleasure only. He studied for 
the advantage of the human race. This was his whole aim ; 
and whether his subject was metaphysics or mathematics, 
political economy or divinity, he was not contented with 
the mere enjoyment derived from the exercise of his own 
genius ; no, nor yet the discovery of truth and the fame of 
scientific scholarship — but his chief aim was to apply the 
researches of philosophy to the well being of the world. — 
All his knowledge was gathered that he might justify the 
ways of God to man, and bring back into harmony and 
happiness the constitution of things, as it was originally 
framed by the Creator. These circumstances will explain 
the fragmentary nature of his acquirements. He sought no 
more information on any subject than was necessary for 
this high purpose; but he did seek such information on 
a great variety of subjects. The same has been the case 
with many other illustrious orators. Lord Brougham is a 
remarkable instance in point. Without a minutely profound 
acquaintance with science, his lordship is so far a living ency- 



25 



lcopsedia, that Lie can draw felicitous illustrations from many 
quarters, and his mind is so completely imbued with the 
philosophic and logical spirit of science, that his speeches 
are truly impassioned demonstrations. His researches have 
been conducted oratorically ; that is, only to such an extent 
as an orator requires to go for the composition of a great 
speech, and a statesman for high mental training. A minute 
knowledge of science is one thing, and a scientific spirit is 
another. An expert application of the transcendental cal- 
culus, or an acute perception of geometrical relations, is 
different from that mental symmetry and mathematical 
metaphysique, which are the very soul of all reasoning, 
and which remove every effort of a really great orator out 
of the category of rneretleclamation. A simple mathema- 
tician is a one-sided man ; an exceeding dry man ; an angu- 
lar, rectilineal, diagrammatic, square root of a man ; — but 
there never was an orator of the very highest order, who 
could not have been a great mathematician, if he had made 
that science his peculiar study. 

Chalmers courted not semblance but substance — not 
prettiness, but power. His marvellous faculty of illustra- 
tion, and his towering fancy — those gifts which would have 
gained him renown as a poet — were never exercised for the 
sake of mere ornament. Whatever he said he must prove 
something. His mind would not permit him to talk without 
arguing. Hence he is never vapid. Amid the brightest 
blaze of his imagery, we discern a substantial and symmet- 
rical form. His discourses may be likened to structures — 
not always — in fact, not often, belonging to any regular order 
of architecture — but always fine, and always useful in their 



26 



every part. You cannot discern a column, or buttress, or 
bracket, placed for mere embellishment. Sculptured it may 
be, even to a profusion of richness ; yet it is always intro- 
duced for real support. Anything that is appended simply 
for show is, in oratory, as well as in architecture, an untaste- 
ful redundancy. It matters not how beautiful it may be in 
itself, if, in its actual position, it is useless. Imagery that 
conceals, rather than sets off, the truth, is no better than 
bright rags — the pitrjpurei parmi of the Roman Satirist. — 
Unnecessary ornament in a speech is as bad as if a soldier 
should carry a pennon in his sword hand, to embarrass his 
own attack, and not upon the staff of his lance to scare the 
steed of his adversary. 2s"ow Chalmers's demonstrative 
propensity guards him almost always against this abuse ; 
and that is the grand secret of his eloquence. Its strength 
is equally remarkable with its gorgeousness. His very- 
descriptions and similes are arguments. In one of his astro- 
nomical discourses, he refutes the infidel objection to divine 
revelation, which is based on the material insignificance of 
our planet when compared with the whole universe of God ; 
and in doing so, he charms and melts us with the descrip- 
tion of a mariner — " a sailor boy " — in a tempest, and 
afterwards amid the dangers and hardships of some savage 
isle. But when we find him, in the end of the passage, 
introducing the thought that the distresses of this wanderer 
absorb the soul of his parent, as she listens to the howling 
of the storm, and forgets all her children except him, because 
they are safe at home, while he is far away and in peril, we 
perceive that the whole is only a picturesque argument to 
justify the yearning of the Great Parent over that province 
of His dominions which had gone astray, while the rest re- 



27 



mained true to their allegiance — which was forlorn and hope- 
less, while the rest were rejoicing in the blessedness of their 
Father's home. The same may be said of his description 
of the English fox-hunt in his sermon on cruelty to animals. 
This brilliantly poetic scene is not painted for mere effect ; 
neither is it presented for the sake of welding to its termi- 
nation certain common-place reflections, beginning with 
ah ! and alas ! on the barbarity of human sports. This is 
what a common declaimer would haye done. But in Chal- 
mers's mouth it is a step in a close and ingenious demon- 
stration on the j)hilosophic question of abstract cruelty. — 
It is truly a useful pillar in the edifice he has been rearing. 
Scores of examples of the same kind might be gathered 
from the Doctor's writings. It is in this argumentative 
idiosyncracy that his great strength lies ; and here he reads 
a noble lesson to all who would be really eloquent. 

The truth is, that Doctor Chalmers was a man of most 
fervid earnestness, and notwithstanding all his peculiarities, 
eminently natural. It would be the greatest possible mis- 
take to suppose that he was, to any noticeable extent, tinct- 
ured with the vanity of self-display. Doubtless he shared 
with other illustrious men in the love of fame — " that last 
infirmity of noble minds ;" but his glowing love for his 
brethren of the species, and his heart's desire to see them 
good and happy, both here and hereafter, were so strong 
and over-mastering, as to divest him of all, or nearly all 
exhibition of himself, and the affectation of what some men 
call fine writing. More than any speaker I ever listened 
to, he abandoned himself, in the delivery of his discourses, 
to the full energy of his feelings ; and, like a good vi spirit- 



28 



ual medium" of the present day, lie seemed entirely pas- 
sive to the inspiration of his own genius. It possessed him. 
It bore him along as in a chariot of fire ; and no hearer had 
inclination or power to observe whether the writing was 
fine or no. To criticise the composition was out of the 
question. The spirit of criticism was exorcised by the 
spell of the orator's vehemence. The truth spoken was 
everything, the terms employed were nothing. Indeed, I 
have often felt, in the utterance of his grandest passages, 
an effect similar to that produced by instrumental music, 
which lodges an idea, or raises an emotion in the soul, 
without the intervention of words. The thought and feel- 
ing were there ; but if you had attempted to report the 
language, you would have found the task impossible. Your 
attention had been so entirely occupied with the truth con- 
veyed, that you lost all consciousness of the vehicle. This, 
surely, was the very triumph of earnestness ; and no ma^i 
can hope to entrance an audience as Chalmers did, unless 
he can, in like manner, totally forget himself, and abandon 
his body, soul, and spirit to the force of truth alone ! 

It was this combination, therefore, of intense, heart-blood 
earnestness, and vivid demonstration, with a fervid and lofty 
imagination in Chalmers, that rendered his eloquence so 
effective, and that makes his discourses read so well in pri- 
vate. Aided gr tly in their force by his own energetic 
pronunciation of them, they are, nevertheless, not of that 
kind which, when perused in the closet, cause us to wonder 
wherein their charm consisted when pronounced. Hugh 
Miller, in that sad but noble dying "Testimony" of his, 
speaks of Chalmers's oratory as something wonderful that 



29 



" lives in memory as a vanished power, which even his 
extraordinary writings fail adequately to represent." Still 
the writings, apart altogether from their delivery, are extra- 
ordinary ; and that is the real point of distinction between 
declamation and genuine eloquence. 

Doctor Chalmers's oratory was effective, partly in conse- 
quence of his style and delivery, and partly in spite of these. 
His style was formed upon that of the old puritan and 
presbyterian divines ; but it was at the same time very 
much his own. Their phrases and idioms he adopted — and 
he loved them*because they were, in a great measure, the 
same as, or similar to, those of the Bible ; but the structure 
of his periods was entirely different from theirs. It was 
not conversational, neither did it bear the marks of being 
easily executed. The fact is, that composition as well as 
thinking, in the case of Chalmers, was a laborious matter, 
and in both, he appears to have had an utter aversion to 
common-place, or to anything resembling common-place. 
Hence his very limited extemporaneous power. Doctor 
Samuel Johnson thought in the same style with other men, 
and then translated the ideas thus embodied, into his well- 
known sonorous and mechanical rythm. Instances of this 
double process are on record — instances in which the great 
moralist first expressed himself in ordinary terms, and then, 
clothed the sentiment anew in its characteristic dress. It 
was even so with Chalmers. His written, and much of his 
spoken, language, was translated from the ordinary vehicle 
of thought, into his own peculiar style. But in this style, 
with all its impurities, there is a force, and a majesty, and 
grand music, which, in themselves, possess a fascination. — 



30 



Both auditor and reader are carried along by its very pon- 
derosity, and the roll of its oriental and barbaric melody. 
And so sublimely energetic was the man, that the language 
employed, so far from oifending by its singularity, seemed 
the very instrument that was fitted for the orator's grasp. 
It was the hammer of Thor, the club of Hercules, the sword 
of Gideon ! I cannot help recurring to the vehemence — 
the ingenium perfervidum — of the Scottish preacher. The 
energy of Doctor Chalmers's delivery is inconceivable by 
any one who never heard him. Those Demosthenic ges- 
tures — the supplosio pedis and percussio femoris — the 
stamping of the foot and the smiting of the migh — which 
gentlemanly Hugh Blair deemed unsuitable to modem ora- 
tory, were common manifestations of Chalmers's intensity. 
He wore a pulpit carpet every year to tatters ; and such 
too, would have been the fate of his pulpit Bible, had not 
his beadle fallen on the notable expedient of inserting in 
the middle of it, where his manuscript lay, a seven-fold 
shield of the stoutest brown paper ! He was John Knox 
revived, but a poetical John Knox. In the impetuosity 
and power of his utterance, in the greatness of his thoughts 
and sentiments, in the splendid appropriateness of his illus- 
trations, and in the pathetic majesty of his appeals, the 
awkwardness of a very uncouth gesticulation, and a strik- 
ingly provincial pronunciation, were entirely forgotten. — 
His figure and motions were anything but graceful ; but 
you saw that all his motions were natural. There could be 
no doubt about that. His voice was not musical, and I 
rather fear he never took a lesson in elocutionary inflexion ; 
but his tones and modulations were the spontaneous expo- 
nents of genuine feeling ; and when he rose into some of 



31 



his loftiest soarings, his organs gave forth a solemn and 
rapturous sound, like what we can imagine to be the voice 
of an angel, or " prophet old, 7 ' sent on some embassage of 
mingled entreaty, expostulation, and threatening. It was 
there that he held his audience spell-bound. It was not 
pathos, it was not sarcasm, it was not ornate description. 
There might be occasionally the presence of all these. — 
But it was sublimity, loftiness, celestial grandeur. If you 
wept, your tears were tears of ecstacy rather than of sor- 
row ; if you trembled, it was as one would tremble were 
the eternal world disclosed to him; if you rejoiced, your 
joy was joy unspeakable ; and the whole effect was height- 
ened by the certainty, founded on the preacher's scrupulous 
habit of arguing, that you were not led captive by mere 
impulse, but that your emotion was the legitimate conse- 
quence of a vivid apprehension of truth. 

Chalmers was the most honest of all great speakers. 
He would as soon have thought of cheating you out of your 
money, as of carrying his point by unfair means. Truth ought 
to be sustained by truth, and not by stratagem. If you ask 
me — and I have been asked a hundred times — to what fac- 
ulty of the soul his eloquence was addressed — to the intel- 
lect, the heart, or the imagination ? I answer, that it was ad- 
dressed mainly and ultimately to the conscience. The intel-. 
lect, the heart, and the imagination, he regarded as avenues 
to this, the ruling power in man ; and his demonstrations, 
his illustrations, his figures, his pathos, were all advances 
along those avenues to that ruling power. There are many 
persons who look upon success as the test of oratory. How 
often do we hear them tell of lawyers, who, by playing on 



32 



the feelings of a jury, have liberated miscreants whom they 
knew to be such ; of diplomatists, who, like Belial in Mil- 
ton's infernal parliament, 

'' Could make the worse appear, 
The better reason, to perplex and dash 
Maturest counsels." 

and of political speech-makers, who, by dexterous misrep- 
resentation, and ungenerous abuse of human emotion, have 
succeeded in cozening whole constituencies out of their 
suffrages ; — how often do we hear such deceivers lauded 
as masters in the art of eloquence, and their hollow exhi- 
bitions extolled as the highest triumphs in oratory ! The 
end, say such talkers, will justify the means. An end, 
which they may deem desirable, is to be attained, and they 
persuade themselves that all rhetorical artifices are lawful, 
nay, meritorious, in attaining it. Alas ! this is not the tri- 
umph, but the degradation of Eloquence ! Alas ! that the 
gift of Heaven should so be prostituted ! It is little better 
than the eloquence of the Devil when he mined Eve, by 
lying like truth, and working on the heart of an innocent 
unsuspecting woman ; or when, in the wilderness of Judea, 
he tempted the Savior, whose heart was tenderer than 
woman's, but whose conscience was sovereign of his heart, 
and more than a match for the Devil. The conscience, 
after all, is the proper object of the honest orator's aim. 
A speaker may plead interest if he will, or ambition if he 
will. He may address himself to the love of country, or 
the indignation, or the revenge, or the pity of his auditors, 
but if he shrinks from contact with their consciences, he 
is simply an expert deceiver. He may counsel robbery 
under the guise of retribution, but he dares not call it 



83 



robbery ; lie may inflame party spirit under the sem- 
blance of patriotism, but he dares not call it party spirit ; 
he may insinuate licentiousness under the name of liberty, 
but he dares not call it licentiousness ; he may inculcate 
infidelity while denouncing bigotry, but he dares not call 
it infidelity. He is compelled to mask his real endeavors, 
under terms that stand between him and the conscience of 
those who hear him ; otherwise he would betray the dia- 
bolical hoof, and be saluted with the hisses and execrations 
of the poor dupes who now admire him as an angel of 
light. Of such scorn Chalmers stood in no danger; for 
he loved the honest truth with his whole great soul, and 
spoke the honest truth like a brave and upright man. To 
all chicanery he was a total stranger in his own practice, 
and so generous were his views of human nature that he 
did not hastily believe even in the duplicity of politicians. 
It is well remembered when, in his country cottage at 
Burnt-island, he received intelligence that Lord Aberdeen, 
then high in the councils of England, had played fast and 
loose with his proposals for a settlement of the Free Church 
controversy, how his eyes filled with tears — a most rare 
and sublime spectacle in Chalmers — and he denounced, 
far more in sorrow than in anger, those accursed politics — 
for such were his strong words — which had power to 
bewitch the mind of one whom he had been accustomed to 
regard as a nobleman by nature, no less than by imposition 
of the royal hand. Lord Aberdeen's virtue was Chalmers's 
last hope ; and that hope gone, he pronounced the fiat 
which disrupted the venerable Church of Scotland, saying, 
" If the civil power refuses to be regulated in its relation to 
the church, that relation must be destroyed !" " Lord 



34 



Aberdeen, 5 ' he added, " has been the sneck-drawer, and I 
have been the snool, but- 1 would rather be the snool than 
the sneck-drawer!" — that is, when interpreted, Lord Aber- 
deen has been the shuffler, and I have been the simpleton, 
but I would rather be the simpleton than the shuffler ! This 
was, indeed, a noble utterance — very quaint and very char- 
acteristic in its expression, but still very noble. He would 
rather bear the reproach of honesty, and be deceived, than 
the reputation of smartness, and be a deceiver. 

And now, gentlemen, what can we do to follow and 
uphold the example of the great and good man whose ora- 
tory we have been considering ? In this free country, many 
or most of us may be called on frequently to address our 
fellow-citizens, and all of us, in virtue of our education, 
must, to a greater or less extent, be able to guide the judg- 
ment, and regulate the taste of the communities wherein 
our lot may be cast. Our duty, therefore — our duty as 
scholars, as men, as christians, as patriots — is to set our 
faces like flint against all falsehood, all deception, all vain 
show, all ear-tickling, all mental dissipation, both in our- 
selves and other men. Let us see to it, that no temptation 
— no greed of worthless applause, no slavish worship of 
democracy, shall ever make us faithless to that which is 
true, and lovely because it is true ; and that every public 
speaker — whether he be preacher, advocate, legislator, 
politician, or lecturer, shall receive most impartially our 
approbation or disapprobation — our countenance or oppo- 
sition — just as he adheres to, or deviates from, truth in 
thought, in word, in action. Be it our task — uot arrogantly 
and ignorantly assumed — but imposed by our common conn- 






35 

try, to guard her citizens against the stimulants of oratori- 
cal empirics. Let us give our popular instructors to know, 
that, so far as we can help it, they shall not for bread give 
the people a stone ! 

And O ye good people, especially ye young men and 
maidens — "virginibus puerisque canto" — who deem your- 
selves arbiters of elegance — pray assure yourselves that 
it is really bread you are asking for — the staff of mental 
life, and not some curious sweetmeats — fantastic painted 
cakes — whereof the nutriment is scanty, and the dyspeptic 
qualities abundant ; or, peradventure, some frothy com- 
pound, corrupted into a mere similitude of wine — as Tacitus 
eighteen hundred years ago described the German beer — 
but not the generous juice of the grape itself™ fit beverage 
to digest good food, and making glad the heart of gods and 
men. There is widely-spread and deeply rooted among us, 
in this country of enterprise and excitement — of hurry and 
high pressure — a distressing intolerance, a foolish juvenile 
impatience of though t and demonstration — a luxurious 
appetite for high-spiced rhetoric — a passive, spectacular- 
indolence, that desires to be fed as infants are — and that 
too, without even the trouble of absorption- — by having 
the luscious mixture placed within our lips — a pertinacious 
refusal to meet a reflective speaker half way, and to follow 
him through any lengthened train of argument — a perverse 
determination to be tickled and entertained, rather than 
a manly effort to rouse our thinking faculties, and to task 
our reason, as Heaven intended we should do, when it made 
conscience the crown, and reason, the sceptre of human 
sovereignty. This great sin, we maintain, lies at the door 



36 



of many of our people, and hence it is that speakers, more 
intent on popularity than truth ; — greater lovers of transient 
fame than of their father-land — have made up their minds 
to indulge this pernicious craving, rather than to cure it — 
to blaze and sparkle, like lire-works, for the amusement of 
a crowd, instead of shining, and warming, and giving life, 
like the great steady sun in the sky. Think not that I 
exaggerate the dangers of this course. All history tells 
me that the eloquence of a nation, and the well being of 
a nation, are united by an indissoluble bond. As the one 
rises, so rises the other, when the one culminates, so does 
the other, as the one declines so does the other. They are 
reciprocally the consequence and the evidence of each other. 
Out of the abundance of the national heart, the national 
mouth speaketh. When that heart is sound and true — 
when it throbs with the pulsations of perfect health, and 
glows with the fervor of great aspirations, its utterances are 
utterances of purity, and jDOwer, and beauty. When that 
heart is corrupt, its talk is a meretricious imitation of bet- 
ter things — it is the talk of a self-seeker with meanest 
purpose in his bosom, and fulsomest profession on his lips. 
The citadel is undermined and the spoiler is nigh. The 
salt has lost its savor, and when, at last, commotion comes 
— as come it will — it comes not to purify but to poison — 
not to send freshness to the clouds, and fatness to the land, 
but to cast up, as from the depths of a putrid sea, pestilence 
and desolation ! Let us give good heed to our ways. Our 
material prosperity is marvellous, our material progress is 
unparalleled. But how prosper we in public virtue ? What 
progress have we made in purity and truth ? How many 
among us have caught the mantles of the great spirits who 



37 



ascended from the fields of our early glory ? How many 
of us now have faith and honesty sufficient to divide the 
waters, should gathering iniquity come in upon us like a 
flood ? Do not our itching ears, and mouths speaking great 
swelling words of vanity, proclaim our failing earnestness, 
and our degeneracy in those great substantial qualities 
which made the American Revolution a grand success, 
while all that followed it in Europe have been most miser- 
able failures ? I call on you, by the memory of your fath- 
ers, by the pride of your race, by the love of your country, 
by the hopes of mankind, to aid, with all your strength, 
in setting up once more the standard of truth, and in resto- 
ring her dominion, ere it be too late. Doubtless she has 
still among us many a public champion, without fear and 
without reproach, and an ultimate protection from fatal 
outrage in the yet numerous host of our uncorrupted pri- 
vate citizens. Heaven pity us and all men, if she has not ! 
For, when shamed by profligacy, and trampled down by 
recklessness, she slowly, reluctantly, but indignantly with- 
draws from any land, all history proclaims that its doom is 
sealed, its life principle is gone, and its subsequent activity 
is nothing save the struggles, and throes, and writhings of 
a great body that has begun to die ; although, like the 
mighty republic of the ancient world, it may toss, for woful 
centuries, in the long and terrible process of dying ! Should 
we ever deserve such fate — should Divine Justice ever be 
provoked to make the heart of this people fat, and their 
ears heavy — should their eyes ever become blinded to their 
priceless blessings, and their youthful glories ever suffer an 
eclipse, the gloom of such a catastrophe would shed disas- 
trous twilight, not only over this new world, but over half 



38 



the nations of the old ; but should it be the Almighty Ruler's 
will, that in spite of our waywardness, the youth of this peo- 
ple shall still be renewed like the eagle's, which they have 
chosen for their emblem — should they grasp the thunder- 
bolt, not to strike the feeble, but to confound the guilty — 
should they be able to gaze undazzled even on the noontide 
splendor of their hopes, and, when tempests come, to cleave 
the adverse storm, and soar high into the pure serene of heav- 
en — then shall many a heart, that has been mourning for all 
the abominations that are done amongst us, leap once more 
for joy, and many an eye, that has been turned in earnest 
longing towards this land of promise, shall brighten again 
with the assurance that oppression is doomed, and that the 
great day of liberty is drawing nigh ! 



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